Forget the asset right downs what about the underlying results.
And what of the future of the fleet? AJ said that once QFI returned a profit on the capital (which has been massively written down in value therefore depreciation is much less an issue for the bottom line) he would invest in new aircraft. He is predicting QFI will return to profitibility by end-H1 FY2015, ie December. Here was his chance for renewal: replace some of the aircraft he's consigned to the Boneyard with a few of the 787-9 options expiring Nov 2014 - Feb 2015: they would roll off the production line from 2016 allowing accelerated retirement of the now much-devalued B744s. Instead, in the cacophony surrounding one of corporate Australia's largest ever losses, many have missed the real news that the options have been pushed back even further to 2017.
Another year of excessive fuel burn, network disruption costs and maintenance costs on obsolete, unreliable and thirsty B744s.
Lets face it, Joyce is not going to go, why would he?
Because the Board have probably already been quietly canvassing potential future CEOs, and they probably know that no sane self-respecting potential CEO is willing to take a hospital pass to fix the mess that AJ and friends have created. I know if I was approached my response would be "If the airline is still alive and turning a profit in 12 - 24 months, call me. Till then AJ can eat his own **** sandwich."
This is all part of an orchestrated plan. Make the airline look like a financial disaster by filling the books with expenditures, slash-rstructure and try get some government relief, then reposition the books back to profitability.
A $2.8B loss, and frankly I think they're patting themselves on the back that it wasn't larger. Remember the many predictions of a $750M-$1B underlying loss? Now $2.8B is pretty close to $3B, and that book loss would have been even closer to $3B had the underlying loss been closer to the predictions... Now recall AJ sticking his hand out to the Gummint for $3B a few months ago. Coincidence?